National Novel Writing Month
My NaNoWriMo Journey 
Whew, updates, updates, updates. To begin with let me just say, I had no idea what to expect. At noon, my time, but 9am our zoom leader's time, we connect to the call. I tend to attempt to enter about 10 minutes early as sometimes I can be let in early just to speak with some of the writers and I love that! My first day, 11/2, I did a terrible job. I got up multiple times for a snack (didn't eat lunch before sitting down and 12 to 1:30 is late for no food!), I also got up to refill my water glass and again to use the bathroom. I fussed with my laptop screen too much. I didn't have my book outline open and ready and I had to jump off early. Altogether, I only wrote I only wrote 598 words. Gotta do better than that!
And I did. For the rest of the week, I was consistently writing over 1000 words a day. I had been able to use my emotions, which were wildly swinging while the votes were being tallied in swing states, to write some great pieces! I did focus on the scenes that should have fear, yes, but it worked! I was also super excited as our zoom room leader and editor extraordinare, Anne Hawley, and wonderful prompt provider and another extraordinary editor, Rachelle Ramirez, offered to appear on Saturdays and Sundays! Yes please!!
Then, things got depressive. I heard my uncle passed away. He had cancer, but had been holding his own and no one expected to hear that news! As noon got closer and closer to me, I really wanted to ignore the commitment I made to myself and to the writing group when I joined it. I knew they would understand but I also knew that if I stopped, even for this absolutely valid reason, It could be too long before I came back and I would hate to lose my momentum. It's only 90 minutes and no family members needed my help, being that I live pretty far away. So I pushed through and wrote for 90 minutes again (maybe a bit less as I watched quite a few "you about to lose your job" vids when I felt I needed to smile again. I got 698 words out and I used the current state of my emotions to write what I hope is a poignant scene of a character losing their husband. It may not end up being used, but it's out there. All in all, two weeks into NaNoWriMo, I have over 12,000 new words. Yes, they are not publishable right now, but getting them on a page is 70% of the battle! It takes my total word count for the novel I am working on past 40,000 words. Near halfway done!